From a Cairo Prison to a Poignant Wedding

The bride and her close female family and friends watch from a platform as the groom and young male guests dance at the far side of the reception hall.CreditCreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

By Tammy La Gorce

Sept. 8, 2017

Not every bride would be thrilled with the idea of being upstaged by a wedding guest. But Habiba Shebita would have welcomed the chance to share the spotlight with Omar Malek, a friend of her fiancé, Mohamed Soltan.

Mr. Malek, 31, and Mr. Soltan, 29, were inmates in a Cairo prison two years ago after being arrested in a widespread government crackdown on political protesters. Mr. Malek, upon being sentenced to death, made a pact with Mr. Soltan.

“When Mohamed heard my sentence, he was shaking the bars in the prison,” Mr. Malek said in an interview via FaceTime. “I looked into his eyes and they had tears in them. He cried and screamed for me. I told him, ‘Don’t worry, my friend. I will not die. One day you will be married and I will come to your wedding.’”

That promise never came to fruition. Although Mr. Malek was freed from prison this year and had secured a visa to come to the United States in early August, before Mr. Soltan and Ms. Shebita’s Aug. 19 wedding celebration in Reston, Va., his lawyers ultimately advised him against leaving Egypt. There were concerns that he might be arrested at the airport.

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Habiba Shebita and Mohamed Soltan celebrate their marriage with family and friends at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Reston, Va.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

Mr. Malek’s absence wasn’t the only one deeply felt by the couple and their families. Mr. Soltan’s father, Salah Soltan, a prominent Islamic scholar who was also arrested in the continuing political crackdown, is still in an Egyptian prison. He is serving a five-year sentence in a maximum-security prison after his death sentence was overturned by an appellate court.

The couple remain committed to exposing human-rights injustices. In fact, this shared mission was what brought them together.

“It all started in the summer of 2013, when I had just finished high school and started to become politically aware,” said Ms. Shebita, 22, who grew up in Colonia, N.J. She recently moved to Falls Church, Va., to be with Mr. Soltan, a human rights advocate and the founder of the nonprofit theFreedomi.org, which aims to draw attention to the suffering of political prisoners.

While visiting her grandmother and cousins in Egypt — as she had done each summer throughout her childhood — Ms. Shebita, who was 18 at the time, observed with anguish what was happening in the country after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. “The whole transition there post-revolution scared me,” she said. “It was frightening to see how the military had gained back control.”

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Female guests, along with children, watched the male guests celebrate in traditional dance.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

One day, at an Islamist demonstration against the military takeover, she said, “I came up with this crazy idea to speak on the protest stage, as an Egyptian-American citizen. Mind you, this is very much out of my character. I’m never outspoken like that.”

Before she was cleared to speak by protest organizers, she was required to go backstage and have the content of her message screened for offensive material by another American protester. That screener was Mr. Soltan, then 25. “I like to think it was fate,” Ms. Shebita said.

If it was fate, however, it took its time, and some harrowing turns, before uniting them as a couple.

In August 2013, as Ms. Shebita was preparing to fly back to New Jersey for her first semester at Rutgers University, chaos descended on Mr. Soltan, an Ohio State University graduate who moved to the United States as a child and was then living in Egypt with family.

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Left, Mr. Soltan’s mother, Asmaa Elnaggar. Her husband, Salah Soltan, is still in an Egyptian prison serving a five-year sentence.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

Police began a violent raid on the protest camp, outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque, where he was volunteering. Amid the turmoil, he was shot in the arm, while his family dispersed. Mr. Soltan’s mother and teenage sister fled to the United States, moving in with Hanaa Soltan, an older sister, in Falls Church. His father went into hiding but was apprehended a month later.

On the day of Ms. Shebita’s return flight to the United States, Mr. Soltan was arrested on terrorism- and conspiracy-related charges when police raided his family’s Cairo home. He was thrown into a crowded cell with about 20 other political prisoners and left to contemplate a future that was uncertain but likely, he assumed, to involve indefinite imprisonment or execution.

“It was an underground dungeon, with no access to sunlight or anything humane,” Mr. Soltan said. “I had basically no access to the outside world.” Mr. Soltan did, however, have a smuggled cellphone, which he used to let family members know he was still alive, and to hatch a plan to stage a hunger strike.

His hunger strike lasted 16 months, during which he lost 160 pounds, and developed a pulmonary embolism in his right lung that nearly killed him. His physical frailty was compounded by psychological distress. Mr. Soltan spent the last five months of his nearly two years in prison in solitary confinement.

He said guards encouraged him to kill himself with razors and tortured him with reports of abuse being inflicted on his father. An especially gruesome incident came near the end, when guards abandoned a dying man in his cell and left him with the man’s body for half a day.

But family and friends, including Ms. Shebita, had not given up on Mr. Soltan. Just after he was arrested, Hanaa Soltan began a social media campaign, #FreeSoltan, that quickly gained momentum in the United States and elsewhere. Ms. Shebita was among the early supporters.

“I was traumatized over everything that had happened that summer in Egypt, and I didn’t know how to deal with all the emotions,” she said. “Mohamed’s family created a Facebook page and I reached out to see what I could do to help.”

When Mr. Soltan was finally released in May 2015 — a month after being sentenced to life in prison — his supporters, including his sister Hanaa, were ebullient. Ms. Soltan picked up her brother at Washington Dulles International Airport after receiving a call the night before advising her that he was on a plane bound for Virginia. Mr. Soltan was emaciated on arrival, entering the airport in a wheelchair.

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A photo of the groom’s father sat on the table where the bride and groom presided over the reception.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

Within a week, he was receiving visitors at his sister’s house, including members of the #FreeSoltan movement. “We had been waiting to celebrate this moment for two years, but basically one of the first things he said to us when we got to Falls Church was, ‘There are still people languishing in prison in Egypt. We have to help them,’” Ms. Shebita said.

Moved by his compassion, she decided to join him in the cause. “Our bond developed from there,” she said. “Within 10 months of his release, our relationship merged from professional to personal.”

In 2016, during Ms. Shebita’s junior year at Rutgers, Mr. Soltan picked up the phone in Falls Church and asked her if she was “talking to anyone else” — meaning other men. She said she wasn’t.

“After that we were basically engaged,” Ms. Shebita said.

“I felt like I clicked with her right away,” Mr. Soltan said. “There was this level of comfort with her — I was still recovering, and she knew the depths of all the trauma I had been through, but she was O.K. with it. Her level of dedication is more than one can hope to find in a partner or spouse. Plus, she is really sweet and nice, and extremely independent and reliable.”

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The groom is hoisted into the air by male guests who dance in celebration.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

A few months of long-distance dating ensued, with the couple’s first “I love you’s” exchanged on a day trip to the Jersey Shore that spring. In June, Mr. Soltan drove to New Jersey with Ghanim Aljumaily, a friend of his father’s.

“He’s like a surrogate father to me, and I needed to let her family know my intentions were serious,” Mr. Soltan said. With Mr. Aljumaily by his side, he asked Ms. Shebita’s father, Amr Shebita, for permission to marry her. On June 19, with Ms. Shebita’s family’s blessings, they made the engagement public.

Before they exchanged vows, though, Ms. Shebita needed to finish her studies. In May, after she received a degree in political science, the couple began planning.

On July 30, Mr. Soltan and Ms. Shebita were married in a private ceremony at the Islamic Society of Monmouth County in Middletown, N.J., by Sheikh Omar Suleiman, a professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who was a key #FreeSoltan supporter. (“When the campaign was very small and no one was picking up the story, he reached out and said, ‘How can I help?’” Ms. Shebita said.)

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Female guests snapped photos from the sidelines.CreditChad Bartlett for The New York Times

As they made their way through the ballroom, loved ones whispered blessings in Arabic. Mr. Soltan’s mother, Asmaa Elnaggar, broke down in tears. “It’s between sad and happy,” she said through a translator, adding that the sadness was that her husband could not be there to see their son get married.

“I saw him in the prison, dying,” Ms. Soltan said of her son. “He couldn’t keep his own head up. Now he has a life.”

The family played a recording, more than five minutes long, that Salah Soltan made for the wedding. As it was translated from Arabic to English, the attendees, including some of the hotel staff serving dinner, wiped away tears.

“I am with you,” the elder Mr. Soltan said. “Look amongst you and you will see me in your faces and eyes. I am with you as you are with me.”

The recording, Ms. Shebita and Mr. Soltan said later, was the toughest moment in a night of joy. “It’s extremely difficult to know he could be here and he’s not,” Mr. Soltan said, his voice catching. “No son wants to have a wedding without his father.”

Another missing guest, Mr. Malek, sent more warm wishes from Egypt: “I wanted to be there for Mohamed,” he said. “He deserves the best.”

Emily Cochrane contributed reporting from Reston, Va.

ON THIS DAY

When Aug. 19, 2017

Where The Hyatt Regency, Reston, Va.

The Attire Ms. Shebita wore a long-sleeve off-white ball gown with a lace bodice and crystal and pearl buttons that lined the back of the dress to the end of the train. She pinned a veil with satin trim to her white hijab and carried a bouquet of pale pink garden roses and white peonies. Instead of heels, she opted for lace flats. Mr. Soltan wore a black tuxedo, with a black tie and his signature black glasses.

Keeping the Beat When the band hired to supplement the zaffa, a traditional procession led by the bride and groom, was delayed, Ms. Shebita and Mr. Soltan improvised. As the couple walked from the elevator to the ballroom, the men chanted Arabic blessings, jumping and clapping, as the women whooped and cheered.

A Groom’s Blessings Before the traditional dancing, known as dabke, Mr. Soltan led the evening prayer, kneeling and singing verses from the Quran.

The Feast Guests dined on lamb and veal haneeth and samosas and drank coffee, tea, water and soda — in keeping with Muslim practice, there was no alcohol. The three-tier vanilla wedding cake, with caramel buttercream, was lightly decorated with pale pink and white roses.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page ST21 of the New York edition with the headline: Protesting Together in Egypt, and Now United for Life. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe